Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club. Her father's "Bunny Rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: 
A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston. 
Frankie Landau Banks:
No longer the kind of girl to take no for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriends all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew is lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done 
Frankie Landau Banks at age 16: 
Possibly a criminal mastermind.  
Let me start off by saying that I love this novel I especially loved it the first time that I read it. E. Lockhart truly has a gift for making me feel so connected to the characters and stories. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is told from the perspective of Frankie, a new student at an elite boarding school. This novel may seem like just another average boarding school novel, but don't be fooled by this first impression, Frankie is a spunky and lovable character. She's the type of girl that I always looked up to because she's cool, but she's also wickedly smart and has a little bit of an edge. When she finds herself attending the same boarding school that her father had attended years earlier she makes it a goal of hers to sniff out the all male secret society that she had heard rumors of as a kid. 
This novel is filled with some of the cliches of boarding school, but they're offset by Frankie. Frankie is such a brilliant character. We see her at the start heading into high school and we se the transformation that she makes. E. Lockhart says it best by describing her as "no longer the kind of girl to take no for an answer" because Frankie is determined and she lets us follow along on her path to manipulating and outwitting this super secret society. All in all, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is fast- paced and a must read, I read it for the first time in middle school and now a few years later I still love it. It puts me in a good mood and it has such a great mystery element to it that you'll want to read it in one sitting.
4 Cupcakes! 

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